


Man-Adrien, you're not even in this.

by stickynote_chan



Series: A French Education on Multilingual Marinette Dupain-Cheng [1]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Bilingual Character(s), Gen, Multilingual Character, also the title is a pun because Chat Noir has ruined me, experiences based on a mixture of a lot of people including mine, language explorations, maternelle backstory that nobody wanted, ruined me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 10:30:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7570708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stickynote_chan/pseuds/stickynote_chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>French, Mandarin, speaking, talking, body language, noises, silence, love, hate and smiles, Marinette learns and grows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Man-Adrien, you're not even in this.

Marinette grows up with French stumbling from her lips in childish proclamations as she very dutifully points things out to maman and papa. And because they _always_ coo and smile, she does it a lot because her maman and papa being happy will always _always_ the best thing ever.

“What's this, Marinette?” Papa asks.

He waves the object to catch her wandering attention and maman has to repeat the questions a few time for her to focus. Marinette concentrates, “Book.”

“That's right my little cabbage! Yes, this is a _livre_ ,” Papa exclaims, placing the book down to swoop in and twirl her.

She squeals and giggles and Papa laughs and the sound rumbles through her.

“Maman!” she says when she grows too tired of the twirling and stretches out to reach her maman. Papa passes her off before she starts feeling upset. She cuddles up to maman and points at the object, “Mandarin book?”

Maman laughs and Marinette instinctively giggles as well. “ _Livre_ is 书 ( _shū_ ) my baby.”

Marinette repeats the words a couple times along with maman.

**\--**

Papa and maman are very busy with work they slowly explain to her one day in the warmth of summer and during the new school year, Marinette is dropped off at école maternelle when she's (she counts with her fingers) three. They said very softly that papa couldn't keep up with baking and entertaining her anymore, and maman had the cash register duty and couldn't keep Marinette out front where Marinette might distract her from the customers. Marinette tries to be a good heart and not cry when it's explained that maman or papa will not be there when she's at nursery but the moment she's at the new building and sees everyone else sobbing, her own whimpers start coming out. But maman picks her up the moment the tears appear while papa rubs her back as she hiccups into her maman’s neck.

“Shh, 宝贝 ( _bǎo běi_ ),” she says. “It'll be okay my _bijou_ , my precious one.”

“Maman, no leave,” she cries, “Papa, no leave.”

“Oh my little cabbage, _ma petite coeur_ , I'm sorry but we have to go.”

She shakes her head violently. “No! No 离开 ( _lí kāi_ )!” she says, hoping the Mandarin might persuade her papa and maman more like it usually did.

It doesn't and maman sets her down even though Marinette clings on as hard as she can and now starts wailing.

“Marinette,” Papa says firmly but melts when she looks up at him with tear stained eyes and red cheeks. “I'm sorry, 宝贝 ( _bǎo běi_ ),” and even while incredibly upset even Marinette can't feel a little appeased by the endearment when her papa says it in his soft comforting voice, she stops crying at the warmth his Mandarin always brings her, “but when we come pick you up, Papa promises that we can go to the park, how about that, huh my little heart?”

Marinette thinks on his offer but tentatively nods her head when she thinks of how nice and fun the park is. “Can we get crepe?”

“Of course we can get crepe _s_ , precious,” maman says with a smile and Marinette is instantly feeling better. Maman’s smiles were the _best_.

“Okay, I'll be good,” she promises solemnly but makes sure to hug really _really_ tight when papa and maman leave.

Marinette doesn't cry for the rest of the day which she proudly says to papa when she gets picked up. Maman pats her on the head and Marinette resolves to not cry at all ever again.

\--

École maternelle was pretty fun after the first day and everyday had so many things everyone can do. Marinette really liked it a lot!

Even though, maybe sometimes it's a bit hard to understand what the teachers are saying but Marinette doesn't mind it a lot cause they usually have big hand gestures or objects that make it easy to get what they wanted to do. And maybe sometimes the teachers have to very sweetly ask Marinette to repeat herself a couple of times before they realise she doesn't know what a word is in French but only in Mandarin. Marinette feels a little embarrassed the first couple of times but when the teachers only state that they were very impressed by how she knew two languages, she doesn't mind all that much. They even help her learn the French versions of each word as well!

Everyone else was really nice as well and when they talk to each other, Marinette doesn't think they mind that she sometimes can't understand and have to ask them to say it again or describe what they're saying when she's really lost. They were super nice she swears to her papa.

Like, there was a cute girl named Rose who's very sweet about her stumbles and all and Marinette likes her. She uses lots and lots describing words and it really helps when Marinette didn't know something right away. There was also Nino, a sort of frowny person but someone who was nice as well, and was always talking to her and not minding when she interrupts to ask what a word means.

(She doesn't realise until later when the  _professeur_ or maman or papa stares down at her in confusion that some of the words he teaches her are in Spanish.)

But, really, it was Chloé Bourgeois, another very nice girl, who helps her the most when the teachers didn't have time to answer a question she had about an object. She was always very loud and bright and it was a lot easier to understand her than anyone else because her pronunciation was always clear for Marinette who couldn't always instinctively know what was said because it was slightly unclear to her unlike everyone else seems to be able to. But it wasn't only because of that that Marinette really likes her. Chloé was really sweet and sometimes she was a little mean but always made up with Marinette when Marinette told her she was upsetting her and when Marinette was the one that was being mean, Chloé quickly forgave her when Marinette very sincerely apologises.

Not to mention she was really pretty and Marinette just really really likes her a lot. Marinette stretches her arms as wide as she could when Chloé had asks her how much Marinette liked her. The tackle hug that Chloé gives her each time was almost as great as maman’s smile.

“I love you too, Marinette!” Chloé squeals back, always. Sunny blonde hair so nice even if it gets into Marinette’s face as they cling to each other. They'd love each other _forever_ , she thinks.

**\--**

Moving from the _petite section up_ to _moyenne section_ as the next year comes by isn't really that cool to Marinette. Rose, Nino and most importantly _Chloé_ was all still with her so she doesn't mind at all. The rest of the class, most of who hadn't changed, isn't bad at all though. In fact, there was Ivan who was tall and big and sweet and joined the circle of friends Marinette really liked to be with.

Marinette mixes up 老师 ( _lǎoshī_ ) with _professeur_ too many times to count much to her embarrassment. It's because of her Mandarin lessons, she apologises. The mortification make her highly sympathetic when her friends call a teacher maman or papa by accident and she refuses to laugh with the rest of the class.

Her friends by now have all started rattling off in French with slap-dashes of random Mandarin and Spanish words thrown in at random. When sign language is introduced to the class (Ivan loves the language and is the best with it), that too only gets thrown in their semi-more-than-tri-language conversations. It puzzles the teachers when they accidentally mix the foreign language into their French but mostly they all seem a little proud and praises everyone for being so bright.

Marinette gets a pink star sticker on her last “My Family” drawing that year with simple French written next to it.

_Bon travail, Marinette!_

And then slightly awkward characters underneath,

 _做得好！_ ( _zuòde hǎo_!)

Maman and papa were really proud when she shows them that and then pronounces the words very nicely.

**\--**

_Grande Section_ is even more fun because storytime isn't just a teacher reading to them but now everyone gets a book to follow along. Marinette and her friends all pretend read with the teacher but they're mostly really interested by the pictures. Chloé always shows off the prettiest ones and Marinette giggles with her as everyone tries to act out what the story is saying.

Nino makes the _best_ sound effects.

The teachers sometimes asks each of them to later read the book out loud in Mandarin or Spanish or express it through sign language. By now the five of them could handle at least a sort of flowing conversation with each other.

Chloé’s papa had gotten her really good private teachers for all the languages, she says to Marinette very happily.

“I can speak to you in Mandarin and French and Spanish and sign language really good now!” Chloé exclaims. “That means I love you four times!”

Counting, adding and minusing were also introduced this year and the teachers also just introduced things called “times” and “division” to them. Marinette is slow with them and doesn’t like them a lot but she understands it a bit.

Marinette thinks Chloe's extra language lessons were the greatest thing ever and says she’ll definitely try to get her maman to let her get lessons as well so she can love Chloé four times as well.

Maman agrees to the Spanish lessons but tells her she can just stay a bit after _maternelle_ to learn more about sign language and French while maman and papa will make sure she will be super good at Mandarin.

“Papa was a really good student and your maman was his teacher,” maman winks and Marinette is easily wow’ed.

She asks the teachers if they’ll have time after school to teach her more sign language and it turns into a whole class thing where anyone can come on after noon on Wednesdays and Saturdays if they want free lessons. Ivan signs up immediately and Nino yells with his parents before he’s also allowed while Rose can only join on Wednesdays. Chloé goes to them as well. She says that even though she has a suler amazing teacher, she just wanted to have more fun with Marinette. And maybe the others as well.

**\--**

Graduation from _maternelle_ is celebrated with pastries, cake and Chloé shoving her back into a surprised Rose as she screams, “ _I hate you_.”

Marinette breaks her promise.

**\--**

**Author's Note:**

> So most of this was based on my own, my friends, my family and my siblings experiences of growing up in families that typically speak another language (for me, it was Vietnamese) while also having to grow up learning English cause we live in Australia. Of course, because Marinette also has Tom unlike me who was raised with no really Western parental-influence, I tried not to make it a completely typical bilingual story of being an in between two conflicting mindsets of West vs East and all that stuff.
> 
> Also headcanon is that Marinette and Chloe had been close but then had a nasty split and grew apart.


End file.
